Electrification, a Key Strategy for a Lower Carbon Future

Three strategies to reduce carbon intensity in your portfolio.

Feb 01, 2022

Renewables boost electricity's appeal | Sierra Club

While benchmarking reporting laws tend to grab the headlines, another trend emerged last year that quietly ushered in significant building code changes. Cities across California, including San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, joined over 40 other municipalities in passing electrification ordinances that prohibit the use of natural gas-operated appliances in new construction. Similar programs have been announced in New York, New Jersey, and Maine, while ten other states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have established goals of reaching 100% clean energy, and several others are signaling that they intend to join the trend.

Particularly for developers, electrification has become a megatrend that must be paid attention to as it is evolving rapidly and will profoundly impact building design and construction. One that can be addressed relatively easily during construction but will be much more complicated and expensive if ignored and forced to retrofit.

The 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) also includes specific electrification measures designed to move from gas to electricity. These measures include increased efficiency requirements around the installation of combustion-based water heaters, dryers, or stoves and require in residential construction that if a gas-operated appliance is installed that an electric outlet is installed within three feet of that appliance. This requirement ensures that a homeowner can easily switch to electric appliances “should natural gas become less affordable or even unavailable over the life of the building.”

When paired with legislation prohibiting natural gas infrastructure in new construction, the adaption of electrification is accelerated. These laws are increasing rapidly. In 2019, only one jurisdiction in the United States had passed such an ordinance. Now one-third of customers in California will be covered under such mandates.

When facing this design requirement, many developers will question the economic impact, but the effect of an all-electric design might not be as negative economically as one might expect. Study after study reveals that the actual equipment used in all-electric construction versus natural gas equipment is lower in both upfront costs and operation. This is not new data; past studies have consistently demonstrated this trait. One example from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in 2018, examined both new construction and retrofit costs across seven different cities, with seven different climates, in which all-electric homes still won on the basis of both cost and emissions savings over an assumed 15-year equipment lifetime. The cities RMI analyzed were Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Columbus, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Minneapolis, Minnesota; New York, New York; and Seattle, Washington.

Minneapolis is an interesting city to dive a little deeper into, as it is a colder climate city that instantly conjures up a common misperception that the use of natural gas has an advantage over electricity. The average winter daily low temperature in Minneapolis is 7.5 degrees, brrr. However, even when considering the higher-capacity heat pump that would be needed versus the heat pump more commonly used in a more mild climate, the installation and equipment cost is still about the same as for natural gas heating equipment. However, in Minneapolis, the electric rates for all-electric homes are provided a discount that, when combined with the improved efficiency of electric versus gas, results in a $1,500 savings over the lifetime of the equipment powered by electricity versus gas.

To make the economic benefits even more attractive, many utility incentive programs are now also providing programs targeted at rewarding electrification, further improving ROI. Just one example is Sacramento’s “Go Electric Business” program. In addition, PG&E, the state’s largest combined gas and electric utility provider, also added its endorsement to moving to all-electric energy codes. It is becoming increasingly common to find utility incentive dollars targeted towards electrification.

You might be asking yourself why? Natural Gas is currently plentiful and cost-effective fuel for on-site combustion appliances; however, it remains a fossil fuel with emissions related to its consumption and collection. Natural Gas emerged as a bridge fuel to move our energy needs away from dirtier oil and coal energy generation. Still, it was always intended to be precisely that, a bridge. Eventually, reliance on the fuel as an energy source must decrease to decarbonize.

Currently Global consumption of natural gas is largely split between 3 sectors. Roughly 41% is consumed for the production of electricity, 35% for industrial use, and 20% for use in buildings in the form of direct combustion, i.e. boilers, hot water heating, cooking, etc. By utility providers targeting natural gas used in electrical generation when combined with building codes targeting onsite building consumption thee combined strategy directly impacts 61% of the current natural gas consumption.

Diving deeper into the 20% for building consumption metric, we are essentially looking at heating systems for comfort, water heating, or cooking. Where is the flame in your building? When it comes to non-cooking heating, two words identify electrification “Heat Pump.” Whether we are talking about air, water, or ground source heat pumps or the use of a heat pump for hot water heating, in each case, we are discussing technology that uses electricity to move heat from one place to another instead of generating heat directly—moving heat, as compared to generating heat can be two to three times more energy-efficient than heating with conventional electric resistance.

Leave that heat pump thermostat alone in winter... | The River Reporter

The push back to heat pumps has always been the belief that they do not perform as well at or below freezing temperatures in colder climates. There was some truth in that belief until recently, but this is no longer a factual statement with technological advances. Modern heat pumps can now provide sufficient heating, even in the northern portions of the continental United States, at a reduced operational cost. Leading products are now capable of performing well below -10F while operating at more than double the efficiency of gas. This article by the RMI dives deeper into recent breakthroughs in Heat Pump operation in Cold Climates.

While heat pumps may work for heating space or water, they are not the answer for cooking. As a home chef and passionate foodie myself, this topic intrigued me. I have always insisted on using gas for cooktop cooking. I want the heat to be on or off, and at the temperature, I want it to be at. The slow warm-up and cool-down of traditional electric cooktops simply will not do. So when I saw my first induction cooktop, my first impression was, well, not impressed. It literally looked like a traditional glass cooktop, the same cooktop that I have vowed never to use again. But what I didn’t realize was the induction technology cuts out the intermediate step of heating a burner, instead immediately transferring heat to the pan, pot, or skillet just like gas - the very stage that made electric cooking so painful in the past. But it does do much more efficiently and with much greater control.

Induction cooktops do not glow when you turn them on, and in fact, some manufacturers are adding virtual flames or lighting when it’s on because it is kind of hard to tell it is on. This is because the cooktop uses an electromagnetic field instead of electrical resistance heat.

The difference, however, can be observed in the performance. For example, 6 quarts of water can arrive at a boil 2 to 4 minutes faster than the more traditional cooktop’s ability to bring the water to even a near boil. The other difference is the heat isn’t actually generated until the cooking pot comes into contact with the glass top. This means it won’t be hot until the cooking vessel is placed on the cooktop. Once that contact is made, it will get hot, but not on the surface in the pan. Until the pot or pan is placed on the cooktop, there is no heat making for a nice safety feature and eliminating burn on foods from boilovers.

There are a couple of notable drawbacks; however - cookware needs to be “induction-compatible.” But this may not be as big of an issue as first thought as your existing cookware might work. You can test your current cookware by placing a magnet to the bottom - if it firmly sticks, it likely will be compatible. Another drawback is the magnetic field of the induction cooktop can interfere with digital thermometers, so you might have to dial back the technology here and switch back to an old-fashioned analog thermometer.

How to Tell If Cookware is Induction Ready | InductionPros

From an efficiency standpoint, an electric induction cooktop allows about 90% of the heat to reach the food compared to a traditional electric cooktop which only allows for about 65-70% of the heat to reach the food. That wasted heat in the electric cooktop is likely making its way into the rest of the kitchen, causing the space to heat considerably more with a traditional electric cooktop compared to an induction cooktop.

The comparison between induction cooking and gas cooking has to include some other elements. Aside from natural gas being a fossil fuel and the associated carbon issues around the fuel source, they also pose some serious indoor air quality issues. Gas cooktops emit Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Carbon Monoxide (CO), and Formaldehyde (HCHO). According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Stanford University, gas cooktops add 25-33% to indoor NO2 concentrations during the summer and 35-39% in the winter. They also add 30% to the CO concentration in the summer and 21% in the winter (I know, it seems counterintuitive, however, apparently, CO concentrations are lower outdoors in the summer).

As far as efficiency, while gas offers instant on and instant off, they are incredibly inefficient, with only about 40% of the heat reaching the food when cooking. As you can imagine, the rest of that wasted heat is absorbed by the space in the kitchen, adding to the overall heat load of the space.

The heating associated with space heating, water heating, and cooking account for roughly 20% of the consumption of natural gas. As utilities continue to increase the number of renewable generation source fuels and as on-site renewable energy generation increases in viability, electricity begins to emerge as the energy source with the potential to have a smaller carbon footprint.

The tide is shifting in the energy utility industry. Between a steady pace of coal generation electrical plants decommissioning and continuously decreasing costs for renewable energy along with increasing storage capacity paired with ambitious state and city carbon-reduction goals, the utilities are sending a strong signal that electricity is the energy source of the future. Xcel Energy and Duke Energy have publicly stated goals to reduce emissions by 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. Local Law 97 was passed in 2019 in New York City, attaching real consequences for building owners who cannot reduce their carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 from a 2005 baseline.

The most obvious route to move towards these decarbonization goals is the electrification of building heating systems, as well as transportation systems. However, the end result will result in an increased demand for electrical supply. Some have estimated as much as an 85% increase in supply will be required to meet the demand by 2050.

This underscores the importance of energy efficiency. Increased demand brings increased pressure to minimize wasted resources. While electrification provides a cost-effective path to decarbonization, it still pales in cost when compared to efficiency.

The next decade will underscore the importance of identifying opportunities to identify waste and improve efficiency within the electrical consumption of our built environment. We are quickly approaching a time when realizing those efficiencies will be expected rather than encouraged, meaning the financial incentives begin to shift away from efficiency and move towards electrification. No different than lighting, financial incentives have begun to turn away from offering significant incentives for conversion from incandescent lighting to LED. As the payback is already present in efficiency alone, the utility companies are increasingly finding it less necessary to provide additional financial incentives for these conversions. While we are not there yet, this same trajectory may begin to show itself in other efficiency measures. The lesson: don’t wait. If you haven’t modernized your property, and you are planning on using utility incentive dollars to help increase your ROI, you need to be planning for those improvements now and reserving those incentive funds before they shift to other priorities.

You can help reduce the impact of the built environment by sharing this blog with your peers. Together we can impact the 39% of greenhouse gasses attributed to the built environment. It starts with awareness, and we succeed with teamwork.

Stay well!

Thirty Nine

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